University of Sydney evangelical students vote to keep Jesus

An evangelical student group has refused to remove a vow to Jesus from its constitution despite being threatened with deregistration from the Sydney University student body.

The Sydney University Evangelical Union was issued an ultimatum by university's student union last week to remove a requirement that new members sign "Jesus is Lord" or be deregistered from the university.

Sydney University plans to streamline degrees into three "tracks": professional development, research and a more open track for broader education. Credit:Victoria Baldwin

The ultimatum came after a three-year struggle ended with the union accusing the club of discriminating against people who wanted to join the evangelical club who were not evangelical.

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"Should the LGBTI club be able to mandate that all members of the club are queer identifying?" asked union president Alisha Aitken-Radburn. "Should the Australian Labor Party club mandate that their members have to be Labor members?"

She said the union's actions have always been guided by the constitution. "All of our governing documents are grounded in inclusivity," she said,

Despite the threat of losing access to university facilities and membership fees, the Evangelical Union voted almost unanimously to reject the ultimatum on Wednesday night, 71 votes to one.

"There's always a Judas," wrote postgraduate student and former Honi Soit editor Rafi Alam​ on Facebook.

The fracas looks set to engulf two other Christian groups over the most holy weekend in the Christian calendar.

Andrew Judd is an assistant minister at St Barnabas Broadway and a PhD student at the University of Sydney. He is a former member of the Evangelical Union.

The Conservatorium Christians and the Catholic Society are also seeking to retain faith declarations on their constitutions.

It is understood no other religious groups, including the Sydney University Muslim Students Association or the Australasian Union of Jewish Students, have similar requirements for new members.

The Evangelical Union's "Jesus is Lord" requirement has been in place since 1998, according to the USU.

Ms Aitken-Radburn said that the appeals process had been exhausted over a three-year period and it was now time to draw a line in the sand. She dismissed concerns over non-evangelicals stacking the board of an evangelical club.

"If the evangelical union is nervous about people with malicious intent trying to take over the leadership their club, the board has the power to intervene.

"We have never intended to be antagonistic to the evangelicals, it would be so upsetting if they were to leave the student union over this."

Since Wednesday's vote the University of Sydney has offered to provide independent legal mediation to break the deadlock. Christian commentators have questioned the legality of the board's move.

"The irony of using an anti-discrimination policy to justify violating the right to religious freedom appears to be lost on the USU board," wrote St Barnabas' assistant minister Andrew Judd on Wednesday.

"For five years, successive Evangelical Union leaders have patiently tried to explain to the union's staff and board members that a rather important part of protecting diversity is protecting the rights of diverse groups to associate. Indeed the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (which Australia has signed) explicitly guarantees as much.

"The USU vice president has responded to this by pointing out that the union board is not a signatory to the UN," Mr Judd wrote.

Ms Aitken-Radburn said she did not want to pre-empt the independent legal advice but the board believed the Evangelical Union had breached the university's constitution on anti-discrimination matters.

"We've asked the club to come in line with our regulations, if they don't do that a by-product is deregistration," she said.

The future of the club and its more than 200 members is set to be decided at a meeting between the two parties on April 1.